Imaginary Friends

by John Marco

  “Okay,” Doctor Reed said, “give her another two units and recheck the crit. Then page me.”

  “Are you giving her medicine?” Greg asked.

  “Yes, and she needs some blood,” Doctor Reed said.

  “I can give her some,” Greg held up his arm. “We’re both O positive, Mom told me. Or I can give some to Joe. Does he need any?”

  Mom’s face froze in shock, and the doctor looked at the numbers on a TV that suddenly went from seventy to over a hundred and started flashing red. “Take some deep breaths, Mrs. Lloyd.” Doctor Reed made eye contact with Mom until the numbers turned green again.

  “Can you leave us alone for a minute, Doctor?” Dad glanced at Greg.

  “Of course. I’ll be at the desk.”

  When they were alone, Greg felt like he needed to either run or pee.

  “Greg,” his father’s voice was quavering, “the baby . . . got hurt in the accident.”

  “Is he going to be . . . ?” Greg felt all numb and tingly. He leaned against the bed, trying not to shake. He remembered his brother high-fiving him through Mom’s belly whenever he touched her. Greg reached out and put a hand on Mom’s stomach. The flatness made him pull his hand back as though he’d touched a hot stove. “Where’s Joe?”

  “Honey,” Mom started to cry, “your brother . . . Joseph . . . is . . . ” She couldn’t go on.

  Dad said, “Joe’s in Heaven now.”

  “He can’t be.” Greg shook his head. “He’s going to be my best friend. We’re going to ride bikes together.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” Mom’s body shook as she cried.

  Little tremors went through Greg’s whole body. This wasn’t fair. His brother hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Greg collapsed against the bed, but the tears wouldn’t come. His mother stroked his hair and whispered, “Greggy, everything’s going to be okay.”

  She was pretending again. Things weren’t going to be okay.

  Two months later, Greg added his house to the list of things he’d lost since Joe died. Mom said she couldn’t live there anymore or anywhere in the city for that matter. She couldn’t go near the baby room, and everything about kids made her cry. She could barely look at Greg anymore and didn’t care that he got awards for spelling and multiplication three weeks in a row, or that he ate all his lima beans, or anything else for that matter. Dad didn’t care either. He’d been working extra hours at the school where he taught drafting, engines, and other stuff. When he was home, Greg’s father spent all his waking hours in the garage doing something with power tools or his welding torch. Greg had been banned from being nearby when the loud tools were out, so he almost never spent any time with him anymore.

  Both his parents had made it clear. They didn’t want him around.

  The “Sold” sign wavered in the hot desert wind when they drove away. Mom kept up her blank stare out the front window of their green and white van, not even acknowledging the waves from the small group of his friends and their parents who had come to wish them goodbye. He felt a lump in his throat, and his eyes misted over as he waved to Jeff, Mike, and Justin. Greg and his friends had ridden their bikes and played in the vast desert lot near their subdivision since kindergarten. He wondered if he would ever see them again and stared out the back window of the van trying to memorize how they looked. He hoped he would never forget them, especially Jeff, who had always been a great friend—never once had he teased Greg about his height, even when the other kids were piling it on.

  Dad drove north on the bleak highway into the Nevada desert. Hot, dry air blew into the van and fresh asphalt scented the breeze. Everything the moving truck didn’t carry was packed into their van. Greg wandered between the couch in back to the seat behind Mom, staring out and rarely looking at his silent parents who seemed more like statues.

  The desert of sagebrush and scraggly creosote bushes went on endlessly. The black rocky hills and purple mountains in the distance looked lonely, and the landscape was barren. They passed two tiny towns, and one didn’t even have a gas station. Greg kept an eye out for animals, but all he saw was a dead jackrabbit and a few little birds. There weren’t any buzzards. Greg thought there should be buzzards. They were in all the Western movies on channel five.

  An hour on the empty highway felt like two days to Greg. He didn’t even have any toys to play with. Mom had packed them all. The only thing he had was a few markers and some thin brown paper that always bled through to the other side. He drew buzzards, circlingover a coyote, and a dragon guarding a gold mine that a Hobbit was trying to sneak into. When the paper ran out another hour later, Greg was sick of buzzards but not dragons. Who could ever get sick of dragons? He figured Joe would have loved dragons.

  Finally, they reached their new home: Beatty, Nevada, population: 1,206—now 1,209. The old mining town was ringed by multicolored mountains of white, red, and black rocks. Beatty sat in the middle of nowhere along the banks of a trickle of water called the Amargosa River, which was lined with a few cottonwood trees. As they passed over a bridge, Greg thought the little green ribbon of water looked more like a small stream.

  The rocky hills around the town were dotted with black mine tunnels that were probably filled with vampire bats and ghosts. Greg shuddered when he thought about how dark they must be inside.

  The vibration when they drove over a cattle guard seemed to wake Mom up. She stared into the ramshackle town of scattered mobile homes and deteriorating shacks. After a long sigh, she said, “What a shit-hole. I told you to apply in Fallon.”

  Dad scowled. “Don’t start with me, Doris. You didn’t want to get off the couch and see it when I interviewed, remember? Just be glad I got something in the middle of the school year.”

  “I asked for quiet, not dead.” She folded her arms as she took in the view of the small desert town.

  The van slowed to a crawl as they passed an abandoned gas station, a small single level casino with a smiling burro on its sign, a tiny general store, and a dingy-looking motel with faded yellow paint. A larger casino and a bar sat at the intersection of the town’s only stoplight. The red light blinked in four directions, but no other cars were there. Dad turned, passing an old sign that read, Welcome to Beatty, the Gateway to Death Valley.

  Greg suspected there were buzzards in Death Valley. There had to be.

  After taking a side street with more potholes than pavement, they stopped in front of an old brown house with a peaked green roof. A chicken-wire fence with a hexagonal wire pattern enclosed the squat looking home. A dead tree with sawed off branches sat in the front yard, but a few living trees grew around the property. Two big lots choked with dead tumbleweeds surrounded the house on both sides.

  “This is where we’re going to live?” Mom looked furious.

  “You said you didn’t want to live in a mobile home, dear, and this was all I could get. It’s a good house. Mr. Parker built it himself back in the forties.”

  “This was not what I—”

  “Look, you wanted out of Vegas. I got us out and this was all I could get. It’s this or a trailer. Take your pick.” Dad pointed to the white singlewide mobile home across the street sitting on cinder blocks. It looked like a dented beer can with rust stains running down the sides.

  “Don’t push me, or you’ll be living here alone.” Mom got out, slammed the door and struggled to open the swinging metal gate covered with desiccated vines. She went into the enclosed porch that sagged off the side of the house.

  “May as well be already,” Dad muttered, and he started to unload the van. The tension was so thick Greg had trouble breathing. He got out of the van and spotted a playground just down the street. He needed to get away and let his parents calm down. The green stagecoach, big teeter-totter, and tall swing set beckoned, promising refuge. “Dad, can I go to that playground?”

  “That’s the school. All the grades, 1 to 12 are there, and we both start tomorrow.”

  An oppressive sense of dread made G
reg even more anxious. Going to school the next day would be terrible. He wouldn’t know anyone, and his teacher would probably be mean. No teacher could ever be as nice as Mrs. Merritt.

  “All right, go play for a few minutes.” Dad carried some bags to the house and Greg started to reconsider. What if he ran into mean kids? But then he heard his parents yelling at each other inside the house. He sighed and marched toward the school.

  He didn’t know where to walk, on the empty street or in the weeds? There wasn’t a sidewalk. He ended up on the side of the crumbling street, staying away from the potholes and cracked pavement. The weed-choked dirt was filled with pointy stickers that embedded themselves into the soles of his shoes. They clicked when he stepped back onto the asphalt. Greg used a flat pebble to pry out the three-pronged stickers, then found the gate into the schoolyard. He sat down on a black rubber seat on the swing set. The back of his thigh burned, and he realized he’d have to wear jeans next time, not shorts.

  The wooden bench inside the metal stagecoach was better. He found a good spot and watched his dad unloading their van. A big moving truck appeared moments later and blocked off his view. Greg sat inside the coach for a while reading the bad words on the walls and wishing Jeff or Mike were there with him. They could all be cowboys fighting off outlaws who were trying to rob the stagecoach. He figured he’d probably never have friends like them ever again. There was a pain in his chest, and he sniffled a little.

  All alone, he held his head in his hands. Beatty was so different from Vegas. The old neighborhood was always loud with kids playing or the music from the ice cream truck. All he heard here was the wind blowing some leaves. The town really did seem dead, just like Mom said.

  Five kids on bikes streaked down the road and skidded to a halt in front of Greg’s new home. They watched the two mover guys unloading boxes and furniture and shouted questions at them. He wondered who the kids were, but he was afraid to meet them. Being short tended to make him a target, and being a teacher’s kid had never been a good thing. He felt even more alone and sank down so they wouldn’t see him. Greg kept an eye on them, hoping they would go, but they stayed put for a long time. He knew he should go back and help move in. He could hold the door open or something. Greg started to get up.

  “Where you going?”

  Greg turned, and a boy a year or so younger than him stood outside the coach. He wore a red shirt with a bulldog on it and jeans with a hole in one knee.

  “Duck down,” the boy whispered, “or those kids will see us.”

  Greg and the brown-haired boy hunkered down together, peeking out as they spied on the five kids on bikes.

  “What’s your name?” Greg asked.

  “Elijah.” The boy smiled, showing he had a missing tooth in the front.

  “I never heard that name before.” Greg raised his eyebrows and thought the bullies probably made up some bad names for Elijah.

  “It’s one of them bible names. You can call me Eli.”

  “Okay.” Greg smiled, silently vowing he would never make fun of Eli or his name.

  “Hide here with me until those kids go,” Eli said. “You don’t want to meet them. Not today.”

  “My dad will get mad if I don’t go back and help.”

  Eli shrugged his little shoulders. “Better if you stay here. I can’t hold off the bad guys by myself.” He aimed his hand and shot a pretend gun, closing one eye. “Bang, bang! Hey, Sheriff Greg, you got any more bullets? Bang, bang!”

  Greg wanted to pull his own six-shooter—which almost never missed—but he glanced back to the moving van. Fighting outlaws would take a while. More than a few minutes. “Sorry, I’ll see you later.”

  “Not if the outlaws get me.” Eli kept shooting, “Bang, bang. Click, click. Uh-oh, I’m out of bullets.”

  Greg wanted to stay, but Dad needed him. “I gotta go now.”

  “Be careful.” Eli reached for his spare gun. “Go ’round the back of your house, in the alley. They won’t see you there. Trust me.”

  Greg slipped out of the schoolyard and tried to figure out how to get to the alley and avoid the boys on the bikes. Those kids couldn’t be that bad. Could they? While he pondered how to sneak across the street, he was spotted by a skinny kid with a spiky flat-top haircut that was long in the back, way past his neckline. The boy said something, and all of their heads swiveled toward Greg. They all had a variation of the same type of haircut, which his dad had called millets, or something like that. Their eyes locked on him as though they saw easy prey. He couldn’t avoid them now, so he stepped forward, keeping his eyes focused on the street and trying not to be too afraid. They were almost all older than him by a year or two.

  “Hey kid, what’s your name?” A boy with buck-teeth who looked like a fourth grader asked.

  “Greg.” He turned away from their leering faces.

  “Greg? That’s a stupid name.” Bucktooth grinned. “You a chicken, Greg?”

  “He looks like a little chicken boy,” Flat-top said.

  “Scrambled Egg Greg, a little rotten egg,” Bucktooth laughed as did the others. “Hey, Rotten Egg Greg, you got a bike?”

  Greg walked past them, toward the moving van hoping they would shut their big fat mouths.

  “Hey, Bobby,” Flat-top said to the bucktoothed kid, “his bike probably has training wheels because he’s too short to reach the pedals.” The others laughed loudly.

  Greg kept his mouth shut and looked away from them. He tried not to scowl, but his expression slipped. The short jokes always bugged him, and he was much shorter than the pack of town kids. Why did he always have to be the shortest one?

  “Shut up,” Bucktooth said to Flat-top, “or you’ll make Chicken Boy cry.”

  Greg passed through the gate into his new yard, suppressing the urge to call them all buttholes. He went into his yard and still heard the kids making fun of him. Greg’s face burned, and he wished he had listened to Eli and stayed in the stagecoach. At least he had one friend in this stupid town.

  The next day his dad walked him to school and got him registered. Then the principal, Mrs. Melker, an old lady with broad shoulders, short hair and a deep voice, took Greg to his classroom.

  “It’s good to have such a promising student here.” She smiled and Greg wondered if she had dentures.

  Mrs. Melker opened the door to a classroom with nearly thirty students, all sitting in an array of mismatched desks with scarred tops and cracked plastic chairs. She explained that the first, second, and third grades were in the same room and that there were only twelve pupils in first grade.

  “Hello, Greg.” A lady teacher nearly as old as Mrs. Melker smiled. “I’ve been expecting you. I’m Mrs. Tolman.”

  The kids stared as though he were an alien from Mars. Bobby, the bucktoothed kid, was there. He appeared to be the tallest and oldest of all the students in the classroom. He’d probably flunked and had to be held back. Bobby laughed and whispered something to his friends. All the kids around him chuckled, and Greg felt his face burning again. In the very back of the room sat Eli, who waved, then tucked away his hand before anyone saw.

  The principal left, and Mrs. Tolman introduced Greg, then sat him in a desk much too near Bobby and his pack of friends. He was far away from Eli and had to turn all the way around to see him. He did a couple of times, but a girl with blonde hair gave him a cold look and asked, “You got a staring problem, Chicken Boy?”

  Greg wondered if everyone knew about the dumb nickname. He cursed Bucktoothed-Butthole-Bobby. He turned forward and listened to Mrs. Tolman teach the class about grammar, going over stuff he had already learned in his advanced reader class in Vegas. No one was answering her questions, and it was driving Greg crazy. Back in his school in Vegas over a dozen hands went up every time the teacher asked a question. Here, nothing. Greg finally raised his hand out of sheer boredom.

  “Yes, Greg.”

  “Lavender is an adjective.” Greg felt everyone glaring at him.

 
Mrs. Tolman smiled. “That’s correct. Thank you, Greg.”

  It got even quieter in the room, and a moment later a spitball hit Greg in the ear. He turned around, and the girl scowled at him. She said, “Brownnoser.”

  Bobby and his friends had evil smirks on their faces, but he couldn’t tell who shot the spitball.

  Recess was called soon after, and Greg watched a vicious game of dodgeball where all the older kids abused the younger ones. He kept to himself and stayed near the door to the school building.

  A ball smacked Greg in the face and knocked him over. His eyes watered as he sat up. A leather football bounced away, and a pack of kids were laughing at him.

  “Told you he couldn’t catch,” Bobby said, then picked up the football.

  “I would’ve caught it if I saw it coming.” Greg stood up, rising to his full height of three feet.

  “You probably can’t see past your big brown nose.” Bobby threatened to throw the ball at him again. “Lavender is an ad’jec’tib,” Bobby mocked him. “So what?”

  Greg thought about what to say to the bully and his gang. Eli stood off to the side, shaking his head, telling Greg to walk away. But Greg didn’t take his friend’s advice. “I guess adjective is too big a word for you, you bucktoothed retard. Stick to nouns like idiot and dummy.”

  Bobby looked at him with a mix of anger and confusion. He cocked his arm to throw the football at point blank range. Greg flinched when he faked a throw. “Shut up, you little faggot, or I’ll kick your ass into next week.” He threw the football, and it hit Greg in the gut. He slid down the wall holding his stomach.

  The bell rang and Bobby started to go inside with a big smirk on his face.

  “Butthole!” Greg shouted.

  “We do not use that kind of language here, young man.” Principal Melker lifted Greg off the ground and marched him to her office. His stomach hurt, his pride hurt, and he had to fight to hold in his tears. Mrs. Melker gave him a stern warning in her office, which smelled like a smoky casino. She then showed him the large wooden paddle they used on children who didn’t behave. It had a flat wooden head with holes in it to improve the speed of the paddling.